


(believe in the stars as) radiant bodies of the dead

by okayantigone



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Canon Disabled Character, Civil War Team Iron Man, Death, Delusions, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Psychological Trauma, Psychosis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-07
Updated: 2020-12-07
Packaged: 2021-03-09 18:00:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,598
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27940406
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/okayantigone/pseuds/okayantigone
Summary: tony stark dies in siberia, and returns as a ghost, to watch over the ones he loves, to promise that he holds no resentment, to say that he forgives.he lingers on, and on, and on, welcomed back with open arms, as he attends his own funeral, and helps pepper plan how to break the news of his death to the world in the best possible way.there is only one problem with his peaceful afterlife. the man who killed him, steve rogers, is coming back to the united states.
Comments: 23
Kudos: 116





	(believe in the stars as) radiant bodies of the dead

**Author's Note:**

> read the tags, and go to the end notes to receive some crucial spoilers for this fic, if you think it would improve your reading experience.

0.  
tony stark dies on a nondescript grey afternoon in an abandoned bunker deep in the Siberian tundra. he dies in the gold embrace of the iron man armor, like an extravagant sarcophagus, and the cold preserves his body, with the dead supersoldiers watching over him in eternal sleep. 

he dies laying on his back, looking at the sliver of pale blue sky through the destroyed concrete roof. the blue is almost grey with heavy fat clouds rolling over like persistent dust bunnies, being swept by a ruthless hand from the lacquered floors of his childhood home. there is frost in his eyelashes, and he wishes, in some nonsensical finalfashion, that it were night, so he could, one last time, look at the stars. 

the sun, he consoles himself, is a star too. but there is no sun to be found in his sliver of sky. even so, as tony stark lay dying, choking on his own blood, he thinks at least the snowflakes are pretty. 

he thinks of his mother’s cold silks and colder pearls. then he doesn’t think anymore. 

i.   
in a world where gods descend from the stars on a bi-weekly basis, that he should die by the hand of an immortal soldier, only to be brought, miraculous, back to life, isn’t even a little bit surprising. 

that pepper and rhodey should react to his resurrection with such unflappable calmness as to rival tony’s own fairly blasé attitude is a small blessing in and of itself, as well as a testament to his friends’ remarkable strength of character. 

he never could stand a fuss being made on his behalf, and if his return from the dead is kept as fuss-free as possible, then that’s all the better – he needs to become accustomed to his new status as a ghost, and he’d much rather come to terms with his death on his own time, without having to also worry about worrying others. 

so he died. so steve killed him. normally he’d drink about it. he’s not sure he can drink as a ghost, and is delighted to discover that he can. he drinks, tasting with delight the good whiskey that had survived pepper’s purge of his lab because he hid it in a motor oil container. it tastes even better now that he is dead. everything feels so much brighter and clearer now that he is dead. 

ii.   
being dead, tony discovers, is not much different than being alive. he can’t, unfortunately, pass through solid objects, which is a great disappointment, as it would have been fun to be able to join vision in on – 

vision isn’t around anymore. vision is still too upset that tony died, even though tony came back.   
tony can still eat food – it’s great to be able to join rhodey for burgers and beers. it’s great to be able to interact with the physical world, for once, with no fear. perhaps killing him is the best thing steve ever did for him. after all, there is a certain amount of freedom in being dead, that he never had before. 

pepper and rhodey agree that his death should be kept on the down-low, when tony brings it up. it won’t be good for the company. the plan is to phase him out of the public eye slowly over the course of a few years, until they can announce that he passed away peacefully in his bed, from complications related to the arc reactor – that would be the best for everyone. 

therefore, it’s important now, that tony leave the house as little as possible, and he has no problem with that. the Live Decoy Models, expertly piloted by FRIDAY and TAKASHI are excellent at doing the job of both Iron Man, and Tony Stark, and he is free to do what he does best – listen to music real loud, and make things go boom. 

unfortunately, as a ghost, he’s lost some of the dexterity and sensitivity in his fingers, but it’s nothing that the bots can’t help with, and soon enough he’s working on schematics for new legs for Rhodey. he got a second chance at life – shouldn’t rhodey get one too?

ii. – i. 

it had been surprising after siberia, after everything, how calmly tony took everything. he moved as though a horrific weight had been lifted from his shoulders, seemed to smile and breathe more easily, practically floated from room to room, and pepper couldn’t help the small sliver of hope that this had all been for the better after all. 

that tony had finally seen the truth of the avengers, that she’d been so desperate for him to realize – that these people were no good, that they were liars, and traitors, and that steve rogers was the worst of the lot. now that he was no longer worshipping at the altar of his childhood hero, tony seemed to have done a great deal of self-reflection. 

when he’d come to her with a plan to step away from the company, and shed some of his responsibilities, everything outlined in such a reasonable way that she couldn’t even find fault with the plan, she’d been so pleasantly delighted. he even had a part of the plan that outlined next steps for his eventual death, and how that could best be handled in the media, facing his rapidly reduced life expectancy with the kind of straightforward attitude that she feared he might have lost for good after loki’s invasion and ultron. 

finally, it seemed, her tony – the go getter, the inventor, the da vinci of his time, had returned, unencumbered by the shackles of a group of leeches that had sucked the very life out of his bones while calling themselves his friends. 

ii-ii

rhodey sat in tony’s lab, because sitting was all he could do these days. tony was on his knees, with a screwdriver in his mouth, mumbling something about hydraulics. 

ac/dc blared through the speakers, and rhodey was looking throught he schematics tony had shared with him. there was input from dr. cho as well, and rhodey was immensely grateful for tony’s hard work. his friend, rhodey knew, was putting on a brave face, but still blamed himself despite how everything had gone down. 

no matter how much rhodey tried to convince him that this was something he’d been prepared for – something he’d known might happen – tony still seemed entirely ready to prostrate himself to martyrdom, and accept all responsibility. as if enough hadn’t happened already. that bunker in siberia had been payment enough, and even if rhodey were the kind of person to assign blame, point fingers, and demand recompense, what happened to tony there was more than enough. there was nothing else tony needed to do, in his eyes. 

“you should rest, tony,” rhodey had said, and tony had laughed, and said “i think i’m the only one allowed to joke about being dead, platypus, it’s a little gauche when you do it.”

ii-iii  
no one could ever accuse happy of not being adaptable. 

he’d been at tony stark’s side for too many years to not come up with several ways of dealing with his boss’ whims, mercurial moods, and general weirdness. 

this was just another strange, but not entirely unreasonable occasion, where happy’s fortitude was called upon. 

“sorry boss, you want a what?” 

“i know it’s weird, hap,” tony said. he was wearing a t-shirt and worn jeans, and ugly sneakers, looking more comfortable than happy had ever seen him. 

“well, as long as you know how weird it is,” happy said, and patted tony’s shoulder. tony dind’t flinch. tony leaned into it. it had been so long since happy could move around tony without his boss flinching. 

happy wanted to hug him. happy wanted to do anything and everything to keep this tony – smiling, relaxed, finally, after so long seemingly content for as long as possible. 

they had been devastated after siberia – him, and pepper, and rhodes, about what it would mean. but there tony was, whole, seemingly perfectly fine and alive. 

if he wanted to host and attend his own funeral, well… who was happy to say no? 

iii.  
tony had asked vision to do it. this was not the kind of thing to entrust to an AI, and he didn’t want to go himself, because he wasn’t sure if that sort of thing was allowed. what were the chances that if he went back to his place of death, he’d somehow get stuck haunting there – that empty stone bunker would make for a pretty depressing eternity. it had made for a very depressing death spot, after all.   
tony had always thought he’d die in a fast car, with a 300% blood alcohol content, and 4 sexy playboy models of assorted genders. the models would emerge from the crash unharmed, weep dramatically at his grave, and then spread wildly conflicting rumors about him in the media, just to give pepper something to do, so she wouldn’t cry too much. 

well. that had been a nice little fantasy, and certainly, a lot more functional, and better appointed than the years he’d spent one breath away from holding a box cutter to his own arteries. 

in the end, the way he’d died – well. we can’t chose the things that happened to us, but we can control how we react to them. he had chosen to react with dignity, and what he thought was, some dignified humor that suited the situation. 

after all, if he gave into resentment now that he was dead, who knew what sort of things that would do to him. he had done so much damage when he was alive, turning into a malevolent spirit was the last he wanted. 

so he called the vision into his lab, and asked him to retrieve his body. 

tried not to be hurt that no one had thought to do so until now. he’d been dead for a few weeks, after all. 

“you want me to go back for – “

“the remnants, yes,” tony clarified kindly. “it would be nice, i think, to hold a vigil. to say goodbye.” 

his mortal body, as much as it had betrayed him the past few years, had after all, served him well. 

“to say goodbye,” the vision repeats.

“just us, i think,” tony says. “just family.” 

“alright,” vision says, in a voice that has the barest inflection of emotion. his baby is learning so well, and tony is so proud. soon vision won’t need tony at all. 

iii.-i.  
tony wants to hold a vigil for iron man. 

it’s just rhodey, pepper, happy and vision, and tony himself, and the battered wreckage that vision had salvaged from siberia. just blood and scrap. 

tony wants them all to say something but it’s strange to do so with him standing there. even so, pepper walks up to the make-shift podium, and reads out her eulogy. 

she chooses do not stand at my grave and weep, which is an appropriate funeral reading, in her opinion, and judging by the way tony and rhodey’s eyes mist, she might have overshot it a little, but it does seem to have the desired effect. 

rhodey walks up next, the smooth whirr of his new braces propelling him forward. he salutes. he says something brief, but emotional. he thanks iron man for his service. he places the medal that they got awarded – all those years and lifetimes ago, when they were different, younger, living, less damaged, on top of the urn that contains the body, at once divine, and unknowable. 

happy doesn’t really manage to say anything. he just cries, and tony has to, uncomfortably, walk him back to his chair. 

“it’s just too real, boss,” happy sobs, and tony pets his back, shushes him, “i’m still here,” he says. 

the vision is struggling with the concept of death. perhaps it is not very good, that his first brush with it, his first real loss, would also be a person who comes back as a ghost. it’s hard to explain that sort of thing, really. even so, he has prepared a few words. he talks about iron man as a paragon of justice and virtue, and about tony as a person of infinite kindness. if tony still had a beathing heart, it would constrict painfully in his chest. he feels a phantom sensations anyway. 

he is beginning to suspect that vision might be what is tethering him to the mortal realm. that when vision doesn’t need him anymore, he will dissipate. 

where will he go then, he wonders? a voice at the back of his head, a familiar, childish hope that he’d held on to, that had painted itself across his soul from the moment he flew a missile into a portal that did not shut behind him, whispers wistfully the stars. 

iii. -ii.  
tony picks up the weighed urn, and walks to the eddge of the property. the malibu house, reconstructed, redecorated, reimagined as the only home he’d ever felt safe, will make a fine final resting place. he hopes never to have to leave it again. he hopes it never falls apart again. the foundations had survived, and if he can hold them up from beneath the water, all the better. he’d been there, after all, and the deep cold blue was almost like the sky above new york. 

the urn sinks. 

a good catholic funeral for a good catholic son. maria would be proud. 

they had, mother and son, died at the altar of howard’s ambition, after all.

iv.   
when the avengers come back, tony is not upset. he is dead, so the world is one defender short, and someone has to pick up his slack. perhaps it will be easier now, with him gone.   
he sends the LDMs to most meetings, and lets FRIDAY make the calls. he programmed her, after all, and she needs the experience. the team doesn’t seem to care too much that the Iron Man armor is flying on empty during missions. it’s better for them to have one less soft squishy body to worry around. 

and besides, tony is sure that neither steve, nor bucky, need the reminder of his presence, and the guilt it surely brings them, as a distraction in the crucial moment. 

he died. the world of the living is hardly his concern anymore, and resentment won’t fix anything. after all, resenting steve had never brought him anywhere in life, so why would it change anything now. he’s sure steve had to endure enough from everyone else, but he’s terribly glad that the team seems to be working smoothly now, all the grievances resolved. finally, one unit, operating as it always should have. 

in a way, it makes him feel closer to coulson. he’d always wished agent could see what his death had done for them, that they hadn’t disappointed him, that they had done better. it makes him feel warm inside to know that his death had, in the end, done the same – brought them all closer, made them less snappy, less cruel. even though he’s not all the way dead – even though he’s a ghost and came back, there was something to be gleaned from his demise, and for that he is grateful. 

he’d asked rhodey and pepper not to be too harsh either, to let the avengers reform, process and grieve in their own time, that’s all he’d wanted, after all, when he was alive. 

v.  
when he does appear in person, trailing after rhodey at a meeting, or delivering new toys that go splodey to make the kids’ eyes bright (the kids, in this case, being sam, and clint and natasha), he tries to be inobtrusive, to not remind them too much of what happened. knowing that he died and came back is already hard enough – the constant reminders of it are likely disturbing. not everyone has pepper’s mental fortitude, after all. 

they still eye him with mistrust, and keep their distance, especially clint and wanda, and who can blame them – wanda can very likely sense he’s not of this world, and clint’s interactions with the supernatural have never been all too positive. 

he avoids steve out of the same principle that keeps him avoiding Siberia. he isn’t sure what seeing his murderer will do to the tether that keeps him connected to the mortal coil. he isn’t’ sure he wants to test it. he does not want to be a mindless thing of destruction. that was never what he wanted. 

in a way, he can understand barnes now, who steers clear of his code words the way tony steers clear of ice. 

vi. 

“so what are you gonna say at my funeral, now that you've killed me?” tony asks from the doorway of the kitchen at the compound. he’d been tending to sam’s wings down in the lab, and steve hadn’t heard him come in. 

he tries to suppress his flinch. tony had been nothing less but cordial, if politely distant, since they came back, and ross had been sure to stress the hard work he’d put to ensure they could all safely return, so steve felt he could, at least, return the polite treatment. 

clearly after what happened, tony had – 

well. he moved a lot more silently now, seemed more subdued, his jokes less boisterous and caustic. 

“i’m kidding,” tony says, when steve fails to react appropriately to a very inappropriate joke, “it’s a beyonce quote – lemonade – add it to the list – “ steve had, in fact, heard and watched lemonade, princess shuri had insisted. it was spectacular, both visually and lyrically. “you missed the funeral anyway,” he adds breezily, “pepper made happy cry.” 

he fusses with the coffee machine, throwing steve a look over his shoulder. “i’m sorry,” he adds, “i didn’t realize anyone was in here. i’m just after some coffee, and i’ll uh – fade away.” 

“you don’t have to apologize, tony,” steve says awkwardly. tony is making all this effort, and steve feels compelled to at least meet him halfway. isn’t that what caused this whole mess to begin with – that he didn’t want to meet tony halfway? “the compound is yours too.” 

tony smiles, and his eyes crinkle in that familiar way. 

he raises his mug in a salute, and walks back out where he came from. 

steve wonders if there’s ever going to be a chance to repair what he broke. if tony wants to give him a chance – 

well. maybe it’s too late for that now. 

tony is willing to joke that steve killed him. he can laugh it off, but steve knows tony, even now, and he can see, in the back of his eyes a wariness that says. well. what did beyonce say? 

“heaven will be a love without betrayal.”

vii.   
when he was alive, drama had followed tony everywhere he went, whether he wanted it, or not. he had genuinely hoped that now, at least, in his afterlife, drama would have the good grace to stay away. a relatively peaceful funeral had given him too much false hope. 

he had asked barnes to come to the lab so he could look at his arm, which princess shuri had done a simply marvelous job with. he mostly wanted to take some notes, and see if he could anything from her amazing brain to his own prosthetic concepts, that he’d been working on alongside with rhodey’s braces. 

the stark med tech development team would be so pleased, and tony liked nothing better than pleasing people, and helping those in need. that was, after all, the point of iron man. 

“don’t look at me like that, frostino,” tony had sayd gently, “you’re not the one who killed me, after all.” 

bucky makes a low wounded noise. 

“i know, i know, you’re probably not used to dead men walking, but welcome to the twenty-first century, i guess. the dead come back to life, and give tech support for free. on your tenth visit, you get a keychain. or something.” 

bucky blinks uncomfortably. tony wishes he could smack his mouth shut. he’d gone and made him uncomfortable. 

“listen,” he said. “it’s not a big deal. i don’t hold it against you. tempers were flying high, i wasn’t exactly in my right mind. of course steve had to put me down before i could hurt you. i’m glad he did,” he emphasizes, and he means it too. “if i’d hurt someone innocent, i’d never have forgiven myself for it, and well… the gun is not responsible for the hand the pulls the trigger.” 

something impossible and heavy unfurls in bucky’s chest. he lets tony lead him to a bench ad sits down. tony chatters away. 

“…to borrow a quote from our queen, icon, and benevolent overlord, truly the coolest girl of all… i am so much happier now that i am dead.”

viii.  
bucky calls a meeting for the team. 

it doesn’t happen often, not really – he’s more than happy to fade into the background, most of the time, but FRIDAY is exceptionally helpful when he navigated outlook to send out a calendar invite for right now immediately. 

pepper and happy join remotely, since she’s wrapped in meetings all day, and had barely managed to carve the twenty minutes bucky requested. tony was not on the invite. 

“what’s this about, buck?” steve asks. “everything okay?” 

bucky had been toying with the idea of dropping out of the avengers programme, and taking up some college classes, blending into the kind of civilian life he’d always wanted, even back when they were young. maybe he’d finally made up his mind, and though steve would miss having him at his back on the field, it’s not like bucky would be dead – he’d just move to a crappy student studio, and they’d still hang out. 

“why are all of you letting stark think he’s dead?” he asks.

bucky had done all the mental health things. he’d gone through all the therapists, he’d done all the tests. he’d started reading up on things on his own, and the internet – so helpful – was full of resources. 

when stark had been tending his arm, well – he’d been too caught off guard, but the depth of stark’s delusion had only caught up to him after the door of the lab slid shut and locked behind him. he could see through the glass stark, happily humming along to his music, doing little dance moves as he put his tools away, convinced that he’d been killed, and enjoying what he believed to be a miraculous resurrection – 

“what?” pepper says, her voice a little shrill. she will not hesitate. she will ship him back to t’challa right now, refrozen and boxed up and – 

barnes arches his eyebrows, staring at her in open disbelief. “you didn’t know?” 

it’s not like stark is exactly hiding it. 

“he… does joke about being dead rather often,” natasha says uncomfortably, and bucky feels a deep sense of hurt to his professional pride as her trainer that she hadn’t really flagged it as suspicious. 

“he used to do it when i was first monitoring him – it’s just the way his sense of humor is – “ she adds. macabre and disturbing but that was just tony in general. she’d gotten used to tuning most of it out, to get to the important bits. 

“he’s not joking,” bucky says. “he thinks steve killed him. are you trying to tell me that none of it came up… ever?” 

steve has that look on his face that he always does when something has finally fallen into place – when a piece of intelligence has come at the right time, when a misaligned map gets filled in, when – 

“he told me i missed his funeral,” steve begins a little dubiously. “did you guys… host… a funeral for him?” 

the noise pepper makes is a choked off, horrified thing, and it’s happy that speaks up. 

“we helped him bury uh… the iron man armor… from Siberia. we held a vigil for – “

“the remnants,” vision said. “that’s what he – he asked me to bring back his remnants.” 

“and you didn’t think that was weird?” bucky demands, but then tries to reel his temper in. form what he’d heard, stark was the definition of weird. 

“it was a vigil for iron man,” rhodes speaks up. he’s the one with the most sense. he should have noticed this, bucky thinks, but it seems that, after years of being used to stark’s dark humor, depressive moods and general weirdness, it hadn’t registered as even a little disturbing that his friend wanted a candlelight vigil and eulogy for his – 

“isn’t his whole thing ‘i am iron man’?” bucky asks. 

rhodes does not smack himself in the face, but it’s obvious he wants to. 

“tony thinks i killed him?” steve asks, and his voice is small. he stares down at his hands. he remembers well the motion of bringing the shield down. he’d been so angry. tony’s throat had been right there. 

tony thinks i killed him. 

“but, if he thinks you killed him,” sam begins, and then trails off, because he’s not actually sure where that sentence is going. 

“just so we’re all on the same page,” bucky says, exasperated, and decides he’s changing his major to something that has nothing to do with psychology, “tony is convinced that steve killed him, believes that he is a ghost, and thinks that all of you knew all along, and are okay with it.” 

and then, because he’s not feeling very charitable, he adds “class dismissed.”

“wait what do you mean ‘class dismissed,’?” steve says, turning big blue, plaintive eyes to him. “tony is – delusional – we have to do something.” 

“so do something then,” bucky says, exasperated. he wants to run a hand over his face, but he won’t because he’s not, actually, an elementary school teacher. 

“thank you for bringing this to our attention, sargeant barnes,” pepper potts says, finally. “i promise, we’ll make sure that tony is –“ 

well. she’s not sure what she’ll make sure tony is. informed that the news of his death have been greatly exaggerated?

ix. 

tony looks out the window, at the snow that’s falling down, making pretty little patterns in the air. he’d read somewhere that each snowflake is unique. 

“the sky kind of looked like this when i died,” he says absent-mindedly. “i thought it was pretty.”  
the doctor hums, makes a note in his notebook. 

tony doesn’t think he’s been struggling with his transition to ghosthood that much, but pepper still thinks he should see a therapist about it. maybe it will ease his passing, and it’s so nice of her to want him to be at peace. 

he likes this view better though, because there’s also a bit of sun peeking from between the fluffy white clouds. they look as soft as maria’s nicest furs. maybe if he does really well, he’ll get to see her sooner. 

he’d never much cared about therapy when he was alive, but if he can put his affairs in order, and join her, the two of them, dancing among the stars – 

“i always wished i’d died in new york… in the portal, you know. it was very cold, and the sky was so wide. but then, well… it wasn’t so bad where i ended up dying either.” 

the doctor’s pen scratches on the creamy paper of her notebook. tony wishes he could feel the warmth of the heater, but he hasn’t felt warm since his death, really, when the cold seeped into his bones. 

**Author's Note:**

> Tony is an unreliable narrator in the fic. He never actually died in Siberia, and was instead brought to a hospital for treatment in the nick of time. However, he is completely convinced that he has died and come back as a ghost, and labors under this delusion for the entirety of the fic. 
> 
> Tony thinks that Steve killed him, and that everyone else knows about it. 
> 
> None of the other characters are aware that Tony is experiencing a psychotic break, and continue to act as normal, chalking Tony's behaviour up to his usual eccentricity. Tony assumes that everyone is okay with his death, and that they are putting up with his benign haunting of them. 
> 
> Tony's delusion is revealed at the end of the story, to the horror of the other characters. The ending is ambiguous, but please assume that Tony was put into intensive therapy, and got the help he needed, and will eventually get better.
> 
> EDIT: i fucking know it's called cotard's syndrome jfc


End file.
